Mallesons Stephen Jaques has been named the Who’s Who Legal Law Firm of the Year: Australia in the 2006 Who’s Who Legal Awards. The firm also has 50 of its lawyers in 21 different practice areas ranked - more than any other firm in Australia.

Managing Editor Callum Campbell said: “Mallesons is a worthy winner of the Who’s Who Legal Law Firm of the Year for Australia with outstanding individual talent and breadth of expertise. This is the first time we have singled out an individual firm nationally for such an honour, and Mallesons Stephen Jaques can truly be said to be Australia’s leading firm.”

Using the nominations received from clients and private practice professionals, Who’s Who Legal identified the pre-eminent firm in 47 countries to receive the award. Callum Campbell commented: “In determining the leading law firm in a jurisdiction we take into account a range of factors including number of partners from the firm included in our publications, the number of practice areas in which the firm is featured, past performance in our research and the aggregate total of weighted votes cast in favour of lawyers at the firm relative to those of other firms in the jurisdiction.”

Additionally Legal Media Group’s Guide to the World’s Leading Lawyers - Best of the Best 2006 features four Mallesons partners - more nominations than any other law firm in Australia. Individuals are nominated by their clients and professional peers as leading practitioners in their field. The partners are: Philip Argy for IT, Peter Doyle for energy, Stuart Fuller for structured finance and Alan Murray for energy.

And in Asialaw Leading Lawyers survey, 13 Mallesons partners have been named leading lawyers. The survey, carried out each year, this year invited over 16,000 law firm clients and legal professionals to nominate lawyers who they think, have consistently excelled in particular fields of legal practice over the past years.

The following partners were nominated: Neil Carabine (IT, telecommunications and media), Peter Doyle (project finance), Roger Featherston (competition/anti-trust), Greg Hammond (capital markets/corporate finance), Tony Holland (project finance), John King (taxation), Alison Lansley (corporate governance), Kristin Leece (IT, telecommunications and media), Cheng Lim (IT, telecommunications and media), David Olsson (capital markets/corporate finance), Tony O'Malley (competition/anti-trust), Adrienne Showering (capital markets/corporate finance) and Jeremy Wade (mergers and acquisitions).